Dec 2008 18

Residents charged for cleaning up their street6

Clown City Council bureaucrats are at it again.  After we blogged here about Herefordshire council ordering a local resident to stop cutting a grass verge by his home neglected by the council, the council leader apologised after we brought it to his attention.

Today the Daily Express (not online) reports that officials from Adur council in Sussex have fined a local residents group for cleaning up their street.  A group of community spirited residents banded together, raked up leaves and tidied their street – good for them.  But the council have said they will have to charge the residents £43 to take the rubbish away.

What the hell are Adur council’s taxpayers paying their council tax for?  The council themselves should be sweeping the streets in the first place!

Email the leader of the Council, Neil Parkin, and ask him to intervene to drop the charge on these local taxpayers and have the waste collected.  Taxpayers pay their rates for a frontline service, not to be threatened with fines when people step in to do the work the council should be doing.  Adur council increased its council tax by almost 5% last year.  And for what?  Certainly not increased street sweeping.  So let’s make a stand and get Adur council to do what taxpayers expect the council to do in the first place.

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  • Guthrum

    Had the same in Clevedon, North Somerset, Volunteers cleaned eight sacks of rubbish away a week on Saturday morning, then got into a row with the council ‘recycling’ depot, who said it was trade waste and would not accept it. We offered to dump it outside the council offices, and they immediatly relented

  • andrew mcneilis

    Well done Guthrum, king of the danes.
    will the british people rise up? why do we put up with this? same old same old- MPs obsessed with dog mess, town hall wastrels obsessed with – well – petty rules and making the tax payers lives misery. criminal records for wheelie bins open, snooping in rubbish. it will not be long before a “right on council” starts making the tax payer where stripey pjs and stars.
    we are marching towards total state control- mark my words. People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.
    if there was a revolution, i would personally execute each and every petty hitler who demonstrate such a contempt for the people.
    to pay some person’s wages who actually wasted these fine upstanding citizens time was and is ridiculous. it will keep happening and we will do nothing about it. shame

  • Graham Jones

    I know Neil Parkin, Leader of Adur District Council, very well and I can assure you that the incident as reported has not been fully researched. Whilst I support the work being done by the TPA it does not help the cause when printing unsubstantiated reports. Adur District Council has been turned round by Neil and his colleagues after many years of Lib-Dem mis-rule. It does little for their reputation to rush into print until all the facts can be verified. I would urge restraint in future. There are plenty of rotten councils up and down the country who need exposing. Leave the good councils alone and concentrate on the Haringays of this world.

  • Dog_tired

    Graham
    if Adur District Council sent out that bill they can’t be includes in the group “good councils”.
    Neil Parkin might have turned the council around, but he’s clearly got some more turning to go.
    Personally, when my local (contracted out) refuse service refused to take away street litter, I dropped it at the end of a local councillor’s drive way. A small note said “This is street litter that the council refuse won’t remove. I’m sure you will know where to stick it”. They take it away now.

  • Graham Jones

    Again I must urge you to check the facts before rushing into print as I have done. When the Council was contacted about the bags of rubbish they were not told that it was rubbish swept from the street. They gave a quote as they would do to anyone wishing to dispose of a large quantity of private rubbish from their property in excess of the normal domestic waste. When the Council were made aware that this was rubbish swept up in the street they dispatched a vehicle at no cost to the resident concerned and picked up the bags. Sorry that the facts have got in the way of a good story but this is what has happened. As I said previously Neil and his colleagues have done a great job turning Adur District Council round after many years of Lib-Dem mis-rule and do not deserve such negative unsubstantiated comments. I trsy the TPA will print a retraction of the false allegations and get on with the job of exposing rotten councils.

  • John S

    I’ve found Neil Parkin to be a gem, and always willing to assist.